Traditionally, managed network and security service offerings have required a hardware-based approach, which can be slow and expensive to deploy, can require proprietary appliances, and are typically designed around a closed architecture that can be difficult to scale up and/or integrate with third party technologies. By transitioning from a hardware-based approach to a software-based approach, the flexibility of network virtualization can be appreciated for its greater service agility and reduced expenses.
However, while a network managed using a software-based approach has many advantages over a network managed using a hardware-based approach, some challenges exist in both networks. For example, implementing a network with a full mesh topology can be more difficult if one or more endpoints are behind a network address translation (NAT) device. In order to solve this challenge, a Traversal Using Relays around NAT (TURN) server may be used.